The boom in biotechnology and genomics is also having an impact on science education.

Colleges and universities are moving quickly to help their biology students gain the interdisciplinary skills they'll need to deal with the mountains of data churned out by enterprises such as the Human Genome Project. They're retooling their curricula, faculty and facilities, most notably with courses in computational biology, the emerging discipline that blends the life sciences with computer sciences and mathematics. At least 20 schools have launched entirely new programs in the field.

At Kenyon College in Ohio, mathematical biologist Keith Howard, with support from an HHMI grant, is helping establish math courses that emphasize computer modeling of biological problems. This year, the college hopes to fill a new faculty position with a joint appointment in the mathematics and biology departments.

The biology and mathematics faculties at Harvey Mudd College in California decided to alter their programs—and not just because the life sciences are increasingly quantitative. Professors had also noticed that students were assembling makeshift majors that combine mathematics with the sciences, says F. Sheldon Wettack, a chemistry professor and dean of the faculty. An HHMI grant will enable the college to hire a bioengineering faculty member, update computational and molecular biology facilities and free up faculty to develop a program in quantitative life sciences. In addition, a new joint major in mathematics and biology is in the planning stages.

Biology professor David H. Deheer, director of HHMI- supported education programs at Calvin College in Michigan, also cites the need to keep pace with trends in biotechnology and to prepare graduates for academia or industry. Last year, Calvin introduced an undergraduate major in biotechnology, in which life sciences courses emphasize computational biology. At Haverford College in Pennsylvania, the quantitative skills of both faculty members and students are being brought up to speed. "This year, we have a course called Computing Across the Sciences for faculty members in the natural sciences," says biologist Philip M. Meneely, chair of the department of biology. Meneely hopes the training will help professors incorporate computational and mathematical skills into existing courses.

This past fall, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York welcomed its first group of freshmen majoring in bioinformatics, a program implemented with an HHMI grant. The students will take a variety of molecular biology courses and work in a new computer lab where they can run biological simulations during lectures. Instead of the usual introductory biology course, they're starting off with cell and molecular biology.

These and similar programs at campuses across the country appear not a moment too soon. Scientists proficient in computational biology are in great demand, as illustrated by the growing number of job announcements in the journal Science. According to a 1999 report in Science and Public Policy by economists Paula E. Stephan and Grant Black of Georgia State University (GSU), the number of announcements in Science for computational biology specialists doubled between 1996 and 1997. Since then, the field has gotten even hotter.

Many researchers, however, have had little formal instruction in computational biology. To get the help they need, they may hire younger scientists who gained the necessary skills informally through Web-based tutorials, commercial software and seminars. But such individuals are in short supply, and the shortage is likely to persist until colleges and universities catch up. That won't be easy with so few experts available to teach courses in computational biology and to help integrate computational biology into the broader curricula.

Certain academic realities will prolong the shortage. "There is very little cross-pollination between mathematics and biology," says Kenyon's Howard. Long-standing barriers between disciplines discourage students and faculty from crossing over, so biology students avoid taking computer science or mathematics courses, just as computer science and mathematics students are reluctant to delve into other sciences.

Another factor noted in the 1999 GSU study is that the needs of industry—while clearly pressing—have exerted less influence on life sciences departments than on departments of engineering and computer sciences, whose students traditionally go into industry. In contrast, faculty members in the life sciences tend to steer their graduates toward academia and may even be ignorant of the training students need for the biotech industry.

— DKC

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Reprinted from the HHMI Bulletin,
January 2001, Pages 18-25
©2001 Howard Hughes Medical Institute